The life and times of Mike Pezzullo

In 2019, when Senator Rex Patrick criticised Home Affairs for pursuing a leak to journalist Annika Smethurst (suggesting there was a double standard about which leaks were pursued), Pezzullo called him personally to register his displeasure at suggestions he was adverse to media scrutiny, and suggest Patrick should confine his commentary to the minister. The then-minister, Peter Dutton, later said the contact was “inappropriate”.

Earlier when Greens senator Jordon Steele-John attacked Pezzullo in the Senate for his role in the 2018 encryption laws, describing him as a man of “dangerous ideas [and] radical disposition” in comments he had to partially withdraw, Pezzullo wrote a formal letter complaining at the screed, which he said was “untroubled by facts or logic” and didn’t deserve or need a response (which he nonetheless evidently felt compelled to give).

Pezzullo’s willingness to take on critical or even just snarky journalism is also long-established. The ABC’s reporting on allegations a child on Nauru was raped, he said, was “advocacy masquerading as journalism”. When then-Canberra Times scribe Noel Towell noted Pezzullo having referred staff to an opinion piece by Scott Morrison in The Australian, Pezzullo told the Senate the report was inaccurate, then called Towell a “bottom feeder”.

His rage at whoever leaked Smethurst a story about plans to extend the spying powers of the Australian Signals Directorate is well-known. As is his off-the-cuff remark that they should “go to jail for that”. The leak, he added, was designed to play into “a Canberra game about which agency is asking other agencies to expand its powers and remits”. Recent revelations have shown Pezzullo willing to play political games of his own.

The point is, Pezzullo has only been caught talking about ministers and bureaucratic rivals the way he’s long sniped about others. In his position, and given who he was talking to, it’s damnably poor judgment. But in tone, it’s all too familiar.